Happy New Year from the WDC Policy Analysis team! As we all try to settle back into work and look forward to 2019 (well as much as anyone can with Brexit looming large on the horizon) it’s a good chance to look back at the year that was 2018.

Here’s a few of our highlights:

Travel to Work analysis

In May, we published detailed analysis of the travel to work patterns of workers living in the Western Region. The analysis, undertaken by the All Island Research Observatory (AIRO), identified 42 labour catchments across the region.

Our report contains a detailed labour market profile of the principal town in each of the seven counties – Galway, Ennis, Sligo, Letterkenny, Castlebar, Roscommon and Carrick-on-Shannon. All of these labour catchments have significantly more people at work than the resident population of workers in the town, highlighting that they have access to a larger labour supply than may be thought. Read more

County Infographics

July saw one of our most popular outputs, ‘snapshot’ infographics for each of the seven western counties. The infographics show a range of facts about each county such as its 2016 population as a percentage of its 1841 population, the percentage with a third level qualification, average time to travel to work and broadband access. Read more

Regional Sectoral Profiles

October 2018 saw the launch of a series of Regional Sectoral Profiles of economic sectors in the Western Region, analysing the latest employment and enterprise data and drawing out key policy issues. A detailed report and WDC Insights summary is published for each sector.

The first examined was Wholesale & Retail which employs just over 42,000 people in the Western Region, this was followed by Health & Care which employs a similar number. The next in the series, on the Education sector, will be published later in January.

Policy Submissions

One of the big work areas in any year is making submissions to national and regional policy consultations and 2018 proved particularly busy on the submissions front.

The year kicked off with submissions on the Issues Paper published for both the Northern & Western and Southern Regional Spatial and Economic Strategies (RSES). Following the consultation period in early 2018, the Draft RSES documents are currently open for public consultation and we’ll be updating on the WDC’s submissions shortly.

City-Led Development & Peripheral Regions

In September the WDC sponsored the Annual Conference of the Irish Branch of the Regional Studies Association. The programme featured two international keynote speakers: from the US Prof. Mark Partridge and from Scotland Dr Andrew Copus. Both focused on different aspects of the interaction between rural and urban areas. The day also included a range of presentations from Irish academics and policymakers including WDC Policy Analyst Dr Helen McHenry. A report on the conference appeared in the Winter edition of the Local Authority Times. Read more

To keep up to date with new WDC Policy Analysis outputs published during 2019, sign-up to our Mailing List. To receive our weekly WDC Insights Policy blog by e-mail, follow the blog. And to follow us on Twitter we’re @WDCInsights.

And if you want to get in touch with any of us directly, we’re firstnamelastname@wdc.ie